Alcuin (735–804)

A leading intellectual of his time and, it is believed, the
compiler of Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes ("Problems to Sharpen
the Young"), one of the earliest collections of recreational math problems.
According to David Singmaster and John Hadley: "The text contains 56 problems,
including 9 to 11 major types of problem which appear for the first time,
2 major types which appear in the West for the first time and 3 novel variations
of known problems... It has recently been realized that the river-crossing
problems and the crossing-a-desert problem, which appear here for the
first time, are probably the earliest known combinatorial problems."

Alcuin was born into a prominent family, which lived near the east coast
of England. He was sent to York, where he became a pupil and, eventually,
in 778, the headmaster, of Archbishop Ecgberht's School. (Ecgberht was the
last person to have known the Venerable Bede). Alcuin built up a superb
library and made the school one of the chief centers of learning in Europe.
Its reputation became such that, in 781, Alcuin was invited to become master
of Charlemagne's Palace School at Aachen and, effectively, Minister of Education
for Charlemagne's Empire. He accepted and traveled to Aachen to a meeting
of the leading scholars of the time. Subsequently, he was appointed head
of Charlemagne's Palace School and there he developed the Carolingian minuscule,
a clear script that became the basis of the way the letters of the present
Roman alphabet are written.

Before leaving Aachen, Alcuin was responsible for the most precious of Carolingian
codices, now called the Golden Gospels: a series of illuminated masterpieces
written largely in gold, often on purple-colored vellum. The development
of Carolingian minuscule had, indirectly, a major impact on the history
of mathematics. It was a much more legible script than the old unspaced
capital script previously in use, and, as a consequence, many mathematical
works were freshly copied into this new script in the ninth century. Most
of the works of the ancient Greek mathematicians that have survived did
so because of this copying process. Not only was Alcuin headmaster of Charlemagne's
Palace School at Aachen but he was also a personal friend of Charlemagne
and became the teacher of his two sons. Alcuin lived in Aachen for two periods,
from 782 to 790 and again from 793 to 796. In 796, he retired from Charlemagne's
Palace School and became abbot of the Abbey of St Martin at Tours, where
he and his monks continued to work with the Carolingian minuscule script.